Snacks for the Playgroup

[Stephanymtr]

What will we be serving the children in the playgroup ?

Considering the playgroup will be taken place in the mornings from around 9am until 1pm, we should have a mid morning snack available for the little ones. Based on some of our verbal conversations, I know you were thinking of offering vegan snacks prepared with the help of the children. Therefore, I'm basing the following suggestion on that.

Drinks:
Water - Should we offer tea and juices as well?

Fruits:
Have seasonal, local and organic fruits available at children's reach at all times. We could put a fruit bowl in the dining room (future practical life activities room). Ex: Clementines, bananas, apples, pears, etc.

Vegetables
Following the same concept at the fruits, we should have vegetables available and ready to eat at children's reach: carrots, broccoli, cucumber, etc.

Snacks prepared with the children:
There are many homemade snacks we could make with the little ones: pancakes, porridge, puffs, muffins, cake etc. This could be a fixed activity we do with them in every playgroup.

Will we offer outside and or processed foods such as bread or crackers for children to eat with spreads like hummus ?

[nelsonic]

@Stephanymtr thanks for opening this issue to capture the Snacks. 🎉
This is a great starting point. 👌

• Drinks: Water for children. Tea & Coffee for parents/visitors. Cupboards labeled for easy discovery.
  If children request juice we can make them a smoothie with whole fruit and water in the VitaMix. No packaged/processed juices that have ultra-high glycemic index and virtually zero nutritional value.

• Fruits: all of the above. Seasonal for sure. But we 100% need to know any food allergies/intolerances in the sign-up form Feat: Register Your Interest Form #9 In the summer months when there is an abundance of berries, we will get those in too direct from farmers.

• Veg: we can have crudite prepared and available in the fridge; carrot sticks, cucumber, peppers, etc.
  But we should only prepare stuff we can convert into soup if it's unused at the end of the day.

• Zero-sugar + Low-GI (limited processed ingredients) homemade snacks made by children. ideally this would be a frequent activity but not every day. If we reach the point where there are enough children there could be a rotation such that each child has the opportunity to participate in preparing the snacks for all the other children once per week. 📆

All of this is a superb Content Creation Opportunity! Photos, Recipes & Feedback/Ratings ⭐

With all of these things (except water) we need to keep close track of consumption/usage so that:
a) parents know what their child has eaten
b) we know what needs to be restocked

In the future if the Morning Playgroup is successful, we could offer a lunch option including:

• Soup: seasonal vegetables (vegan) soup e.g: Seven Vegan Soups to Start Your System dwyl/health#171
• Mains: We need to find and test 14 vegan mains that are delicious children actually like eating.
  So far we have not been very good with tracking the "feedback" from our son on the vegan options.
• Fruit: see above. Other zero-sugar fruit-based "deserts" like apple crumble and puddings.

@iteles any further thoughts on this? Can we start adding this to the website? 💭

[iteles]

Two comments:

• The offering will be until 12h00 in the first instance otherwise we would have to offer a meal
  • I'm happy to start offering meals later on once we're in the swing of things, so I would leave this second section (soup/mains/fruit) off the site for now
• We need to couch this in some language around BLW principles of food safety being followed
  • Something like crudités should never be available at a height accessible to children under 18-24 months for example unless expressly requested by their parents - until we know the age groups we're dealing with we should probably avoid crudités altogether and focus instead on having steamed veggies
  • Kids will be seated at the table to eat their snacks, not running around (this is important for us and for choking safety)
  • Food will be prepared with BLW principles in mind so we are not going to be spoon feeding purés - we're happy to introduce kids and parents to BLW
  • We May need a blog post on BLW to direct people to (an introduction will be fine as there are huge, information-filled sites like www.solidstarts.com that do a great job of the more detailed information)
• Kids will not be allowed to bring in snacks from home in the first instance as we have to be mindful of allergies from other kids and we can't guarantee an allergen-free environment. SO either we do ALL snacks from home or NO snacks from home (with exceptions for severe allergies)

[Stephanymtr]

Thank you for your feedback! I know the possibilities for what we can offer in the future are endless, so I want to only focus on the next steps - within this topic.

Next steps:

• Create content on BLW (can be done right away)

This will help parents learn more about BLW.

• Add this information under "what we offer" on the website/playgroup tab. (needs to be discussed asap)

It seems to me that age group we welcome to the playgroup will play a big part in what kind of food we offer them. Would now be a good time for us to discuss this ? or is it too soon to filter kids out by their age ?

• Gather snack recipes/combos we will offer the little ones (might depend on the info above)

This would be helpful and come in handy if/when we decide to create a weekly/monthly snack menu. How should I go about this? Do you guys already have recipes ideas in mind ? I know you have tried plenty of different recipes with A1 - and have loads of photos too 📷

Anything else you want me to focus on next regarding this topic ?